The first municipal building in the town was an ancient guildhall which was destroyed in the great fire which engulfed the town in April 1659.[2][3] A second town hall was built shortly after the Battle of Solebay in June 1672. It was a single-storey rectangular building on Bartholomew Green with a cottage attached. The historian, Agnes Strickland, speculated that it may have been built as a hospital for the wounded from the battle.[4] After the earlier building had been demolished in 1816,[5] a third town hall, which was also used as a school, was built to the east of St Edmund's Church and was completed in around 1817.[6][7][8]
The current town hall was commissioned by a hotelier, Thomas Bokenham, as a private house in around 1810.[9] Bokenham acquired the Swan Hotel, adjacent to his house, in 1819.[10] He died in about 1846 and his wife, Elizabeth, was in ill-health by the mid-1850s.[10] The building was acquired by the borough council and, by the late 19th century, was operating as a town hall.[11]
The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with three bays facing onto the Market Place; in the left hand bay, there was a doorway with a rectangular fanlight flanked by pilasters supporting an entablature and a modillioned cornice. The other two bays on the ground floor formed an opening for the horse-drawn fire engine, while the bays on the first and second floors were fenestrated with sash windows. On the first floor, there was a cast iron balcony which stretched the full width of the building. Internally, the principal room was the council chamber on the first floor.[1]
The building continued to serve as the headquarters of the borough council for much of the 20th century,[12] but ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged Waveney District Council was formed in 1974.[13] Instead it became the meeting place of Southwold Town Council.[14]
